After the election returns for president came in, I thought right away of a great book I read this summer, “What’s the matter with Kansas?”, by Thomas Frank. Among other things, the book spells out how issues of morality have become so significant today for millions of Americans.

News accounts tell us that “moral values” rated just ahead of the economy and terrorism as pivotal issues with voters in Bush vs. Kerry. News reports say 80 percent of the voters who said they care most about moral values voted for George Bush. And opponents in the hotly debated homosexual marriage issue chose Bush over Kerry by 2 to 1. Roman Catholic Kerry even lost the Catholic vote to Bush, 55 percent to 45 percent.

As I watched the campaign, I agreed with the commentator who described Kerry as “vaguely patrician.” Kerry’s demeanor struck me like a New England minister’s, more interested in preaching than listening. His advisers got him to use hand gestures a good deal, and he even spoke of his religious faith this autumn. But George Bush’s down-home Texas delivery was quite a contrast: A difference which I think hurt Kerry.

My hunch is that Kerry’s campaign was, to quite a degree, out of touch with concerns of large numbers of voters.

In “what’s the matter with Kansas,” Thomas Frank says critics see these traits in liberals: Arrogant, rich, tasteful, fashionable and all-powerful. I saw some of that in Kerry. Frank and other commentators say the Democrats have followed for years a strategy that “simply assumes that people know where their economic interest lies and that they will act on it by instinct.”

Frank disputes that on grounds that most people don’t naturally understand their place in the greater economic situation nor what to do to help their economic chances. Kerry sounded to me as if he just assumed his listeners knew he would be better with the economy than Bush.

What is Kerry’s understanding of “moral issues” in today’s politics? Does he, for example, see factors behind the growth of newer church denominations in this country? Author Frank spells out those reasons, starting with considerable backlash in the 1960s against youth protest of U.S. foreign policy, of American institutions in general, and of free love, drug use etc. Since the ’60s, our society has been affected by – to name several – expanded supplies of pornography, more sex and violence in film and music, and debates over homosexual marriage and other same-sex rights, abortion, use of fetal tissue in research and doctor-assisted suicide.

I don’t feel that a candidate has to line up with an extremist platform on such issues in order to win at the polls. I believe any successful national candidate does need to understand the jolting our society has gone through and to address those issues with voters. It is clear that millions of voters worry about such matters.

Frank lashes out at candidates who make a big deal of their supposedly pristine morals and then do a couple of things: A. Nothing about an issue such as sex and violence in the mass media, and B. After getting elected, support tax and spending measures that line the pockets of themselves and their peers.

I agree with Frank: There is demagoguing on moral values and family values.

But a candidate who is in touch should and will address the people’s concerns.

I felt Frank’s book speaking also to me and my positions on issues. A year ago, I retired from being a newspaper editor and editorial writer. Frank includes heads of the news media among folks resented by middle America because editors and news anchors presume to tell the public what is important and what they should think about.

I started in 1969 as pretty liberal on government’s role. Over time, I feel I moderated. I concluded with a dozen years at the Capital Press farm paper, which is devoted entirely to how people in agriculture make their living. I felt that I was a lot more in touch with readers’ situations and concerns in the 1990s than I was in the 1970s.

Just after the election, I watched as television comedian Jon Stewart talked to Sen. Charles Schemer of New York on what might have motivated voters to choose George W. Bush. Stewart, who is politically liberal, said something like, “Do you suppose it’s revenge for the fact that we script these TV programs?”

Thomas Frank might say Stewart had a point.

Not that anyone asked, but I offer some advice:

For success, a national candidate should be in touch with people’s concerns and try to address those concerns, including concerns of sex and violence in the media, stem cell research, abortion and same-sex marriage.

An earnest candidate can distinguish himself on such issues from phonies who tout their family values and moral values when they could not care less about the average taxpayer.

Thomas Frank’s book can be a good roadmap in today’s weird political climate. He also writes about agriculture in a way that can relate to Eastern Oregon agriculture.

Oh yes, the reason I cared about this campaign. In this age of nuclear weapons and high hostilities, it matters a lot to me who is directing our foreign policy.

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Mike Forrester of Salem is board chairman of the East Oregonian Publishing Co., parent company of the EO.